Is Your Intelligence VIRAL?

The world of BI is undergoing some much-needed change. Mobile, Self-Service, 'Big Data' and even some talk about something called ‘social business intelligence’. But in spite of all these emerging trends, one thing I do not hear at all is talk about BI that’s gone viral.

We all know what 'viral' is, right? It’s that cute video of the baby biting his brother’s finger (#5 on YouTube’s All Time Viewed list with 315 MILLION views). You see it, you watch it again a few more times, then you just gotta pass it on. You email it. Facebook it. Tweet it. Digg it. And the process repeats itself.

This viral thing is an every day occurrence in our personal lives. So why don’t we see more of this viral behavior in the world of the enterprise? What’s stopping Joe in Accounting from sharing his Cost Analysis report with everyone in his department, or even everyone in the company? Joe knows it’d save the company $2,323,412.10, but it'd require that everyone be on board. Sadly, Joe's report doesn’t go anywhere except his boss’ inbox.

Why not?

Yes, I know lots of BI is sensitive stuff. But ALL of it? I could argue that the biggest ROI from most business intelligence occurs only if its sharable and shared. For one great proof point, look no further that our own government, specifically Recovery.gov. Just a few days ago we hosted one of our best webcasts ever, 'Get Involved, Track Government Recovery Spending with Real-Time Intelligence’. Don’t let the title fool you, this was an event worth seeing.

I described the work of Recovery.gov to my co-workers like this: One government agency, the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, created a single App (and a robust API behind it) that today powers real-time information for users/websites all over the country. You'll find Recovery.gov's flexible little App (pictured below) embedded all over the place, including the websites of the City of Philadelphia, the State of Michigan, the County of Yellowstone, and Senator Tom Udall, among many others.

Recovery.gov proves my original point: intelligence can be very viral. Noone at Recovery.gov had to deploy tech support to Michigan, Arizona, Pennsylvania or Montana. Recovery.gov started it. Then it went viral. And it continues to expand. And it was only then that it became truly valuable. This data could have stayed behind closed doors, available to a few government accountants and analysts. But it's real value is due to it's portable, configurable nature. It can be used anywhere by anyone. It’s an eye-opener.

Many of JackBe’s customers have asked us to help them do the same: enable a single group/department to expose their real-time intelligence as an API and/or App, so they can safely share it with their peers/partners/customers, and so those people can then use it however/wherever they want, and maybe even pass it on again. We are, in effect, doing what Social media guru Seth Godin described in his 2005 blog, 'What makes an idea viral?': we help our customers create a simple, visual capsule for their information. We are making viral intelligence.

So I’ll ask my original question again: why don’t we see more of this kind of behavior in the world of the enterprise? Is it culture? Maybe it’s the tools we use? Maybe it’s simply inertia, or history, or fear, or the compensation packages of the idea-creators? Maybe it’s a bit of all of these things. Regardless, I predict more viral ‘data flu’ in the future. I doubt anything can inoculate an enterprise completely from this new kind of BI.

Achoo!